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JOHN HUMPHRYS: The Conservatives have
been holding their National Convention this weekend. Mr Hague is making
the big speech right now, trying to rally his troops and prepare them for
a General Election. There is a massive hill to climb, the polls get worse
rather than better, scarcely a week goes by without some malcontent somewhere
stirring things up within the party. Well now Mr Hague seems to be playing
the Nationalist card. He's telling is party that Labour is turning Britain
into a foreign land where its own people feel unwelcome but is that wise
and will he stick with it. We've seen a lot of U-turns on policy under
his watch. Shadow Cabinet Office Minister, Andrew Lansley, has just
come back from Harrogate and is with me now.
Good afternoon Mr Lansley.
ANDREW LANSLEY MP: Good afternoon.
HUMPHRYS: You look at those polls,
you see an even worse one in the Observer this morning: even worse than
'97, your own supporters according to the poll - this Observer poll this
morning. Three quarters of them saying that you can't win your own people.
So you are getting desperate and it's beginning to show, this talk about
this being a foreign country. I've just been looking at some of the language
that Mr Hague has been speaking in the last few minutes: "Britain is going
to lose its sovereignty, its independence, its power to control its own
destiny". Well, really?
LANSLEY: But it isn't that exactly
the threat that's ahead of us, that's what we have been talking about at
Harrogate. That's the reason for example, why 1999 in the European Elections
when we said to the British people that we want to be in Europe and not
run by Europe and that only the Conservative Party would keep the pound.
On the issue of Europe, the British people supported us, they did that
in the face of opinion polls. The opinion polls a week before the European
Election said the Labour Party were eight percentage points ahead of us.
On the day we were eight percentage points ahead of them. There are many
voters at the moment who know that Labour have failed to deliver but they
don't yet know what's going to happen in the next Parliament. What we have
to do is to show and it is increasingly clear what will happen, what the
threats are in the next Parliament if Labour were allowed to form a second
government. It's not just that they would continue to fail to deliver because
there's always spin and they'll never deliver, you can see it in the education
service. There was a debate this morning at Harrogate. Teacher supply is
in crisis, teachers' morale is at rock bottom, police morale is at rock
bottom, doctors feel threatened by the way Labour are attacking the NHS.
But it's also, as William was saying this morning, it's about the country
we want to have. We want to keep our pound.
HUMPHRYS: "A foreign country" I
mean Mr Heseltine himself thinks that's nonsense. Even he has had doubts
about whether to vote for you on account of it. Admittedly he has resolved
those doubts, but the very fact that he was in, as he puts it, a dilemma
as to whether to vote for you. He clearly thinks you are a bit desperate.
LANSLEY: He made it perfectly clear,
I've read it this morning in the Independent on Sunday. He said he will
vote Conservative, he will support William Hague...
HUMPHRYS: Yes he has but he was
in a dilemma - look "My dilemma over voting Tory" He used to be Deputy
Prime Minister.
LANSLEY: The point is what William
was saying this morning and people will recognise this, is that we want
to get our country back. We want to be sure that we are not going...
HUMPHRYS: From whom?
LANSLEY: From Labour because Labour
are going in the direction of the United States of Europe. It's not just
that this coming Election will be a referendum on whether or not we sign
up to the integrationist Treaty of Nice, it is also whether a Labour government
in 2004 take us further down the path of a United States of Europe. It
is a referendum on whether two years from now, as Mr Blair has said he
wishes to do, he will scrap the pound and we will no longer have control
of our own economy. It's an issue of whether contrary to Labour's promises
there will be fewer police and people will not feel safe on our own streets.
This is the kind of Britain we've recognised in the past where we control
our own currency, we are able to be relatively independent, we are able
to have relatively safe streets, these things are not happening now and
we need to get them back.
HUMPHRYS: The trouble with the
sort of language and this sort of approach is that it's in danger of spilling
over into some sort of xenophobia isn't it. We've even got..
LANSLEY: Well it is if you characterise
that but that isn't where it comes from...
HUMPHRYS: Well, when you talk about...(talking
at the same time) people living in a foreign country in our own land...
LANSLEY: No.
HUMPHRYS: There's not a shred of
evidence for that.
LANSLEY: There's perfectly good
evidence for that. If where we get to four years' hence under a Labour
Government is where we no longer have our own currency, where we no longer
determine our own laws..
HUMPHRYS: Which we would have voted
for by the way. If we want to change it, we do have a choice in the matter..
LANSLEY: It's a great mistake if
people believe that the Labour Government after the next election and Mr
Blair in particular would let them have a fair referendum...
HUMPHRYS: ..well you patronise
people if you believe we are so daft we will vote for whatever we are told
to vote for..
LANSLEY: ...he was prepared to
fix a referendum on his own leadership election in Wales. He was prepared
to fix a referendum inside the Labour Party...
HUMPHRYS: ..that was a very different
matter.
LANSLEY: He has already fixed the
Political Parties and Referendums Act through Parliament so that the yes
campaign can spend twice as much as the no campaign and it's Mr Blair who
would be setting the terms of a referendum, it's Mr Brown..
HUMPHRYS: ...and we are such mugs
that we would fall for it...
LANSLEY: ....who would be spending
billions in preparing for it.
HUMPHRYS: Alright, well.
LANSLEY: The British people ought
to know, because it's true, that if you really believe in keeping the pound
only by voting Conservative at this coming election that you can be sure
that you will do so.
HUMPHRYS: And you will of course
be able to tell them that during an election but we have got - during a
referendum if it happens. But we've now got Mr Maude saying just this morning
that you mightn't, or even would not send troops to the Rapid Reaction
Force if and when one comes into effect. Well that would be a Treaty obligation.
I mean again this is dangerous talk isn't it.
LANSLEY: Well I think actually
technically speaking you are not right about that because..
HUMPHRYS: We have signed up to
it...
LANSLEY: We haven't ratified the
Treaty of Nice yet.
HUMPHRYS: But it will be ratified..
LANSLEY: And in the protocols -
no it won't be ratified by a Conservative Government because we will...
HUMPHRYS: If we have a Conservative
Government - right.
LANSLEY: ..extract the integrationist
elements from the Treaty of Nice and we will make sure that we do the thing
that we originally were prepared to do which was to increase a European
capability inside NATO. NATO has served us extraordinarily well for over
fifty years and the danger, it's another danger, another threat of a Labour
government, is that four years hence under a Labour government, we would
be looking at a European capability which is designed to be independent
outside NATO, doesn't increase European capability but actually splits
capabilities between NATO on the one hand and a European force on the other
and that is duplicatory. It's what the Americans are opposed to, it would
alienate an American administration from the continuing commitment to the
defence of Europe. It is dangerous foreign policy as well as bad defence.
HUMPHRYS: Some people say you can
tell how desperate people get, particularly politicians, when the attacks
become increasingly personal. Look at what your Party Chairman, Mr Ancram,
said this weekend: "I regard him, Tony Blair the Prime Minister, I regard
him with undisguised contempt."
LANSLEY: Well, let me ask you,
before the last election, did you challenge Labour over the manner in which
they attacked the last Conservative government...
HUMPHRYS: ...many, many times.
LANSLEY: ...and is it not valid,
well then, you'll agree, is it not valid for us to the same to Labour when
Mr Blair has surrounded himself...
HUMPHRYS: I don't recall that language
to be honest...
LANSLEY: ... look at who he had
around him, Geoffrey Robinson, Peter Mandelson, in face of all the conventions,
Mr Blair brought Peter Mandelson back after he resigned...
HUMPHRYS: ...wasn't it your lot
that did "demon eyes" at the last election?
LANSLEY: Yes we did, yes we did.
And I personally, I am not..I am not in the business of negative advertising
in a personal sense.
HUMPHRYS: So, what's Mr Ancram
doing using this sort of language then, your Chairman.
LANSLEY: ...no, but what we're
doing is we are characterising Mr Blair by reference to the way in which
he himself behaves and we see it in parliament, I have seen...
HUMPHRYS: Undisguised contempt?
LANSLEY: Yes.
HUMPHRYS: Contempt? For the Prime
Minister?
LANSLEY: Yes indeed because I
have seen not only in those he brings around him and the way in which they
behave, the arrogance and indeed the contempt with which they treat the
British people, because Lord Irvine for example, seems to treat, by the
way in which he writes to lawyers, raising money for the Labour Party,
he treats the interests of the Labour Party as if they were the same as
the interests of the government.
HUMPHRYS: Well again we must be...
LANSLEY: He doesn't distinguish
between his responsibilities and that does bring government into contempt.
Yes it does.
HUMPHRYS: Well, again, we must
be terrible mugs, mustn't we, because here we are, telling the opinion
pollsters that we think he's a jolly good chap, a lot better than your
bloke, William Hague, and that we think the Labour Party is going to win
by a million miles next time. I mean, are we really so silly that we can't
see this.
LANSLEY: I think you never patronise
people and you never hold people in contempt if you tell the truth. Mr
Blair does not tell the truth. He has a problem with the truth, just in
fact as it turned out Clare Short said Peter Mandelson had a problem with
the truth. In Parliament, from time to time, I sit and I listen, when
Mr Blair gets up and he says things that he knows not to be true, because
we have told him about our policy. He is prepared to lie about our policy.
HUMPHRYS: ...show me a political
party that hasn't done that to each other...
LANSLEY: ..I think that is contemptuous
and it's not what we would do and it's not what I would do and it's not
what William Hague would do.
HUMPHRYS: You've never misrepresented
government policies, never?
LANSLEY: We don't lie about the
government. We don't lie about the government and we don't misrepresent.
What we do is we set out the facts and setting out the facts is the way...is
what the British people expect. Now in the next four years we can indeed
look forward and say, well on the basis of what we've seen up to now, on
the basis of where the Labour Party are, what would happen in the next
four years. Before the last election, they talked about not increasing
taxes, they went up by twenty-five billion pound. How far can you believe
Mr Brown on Tuesday, if he talks about lower taxes. They said, they would
put more police on the beat and in fact, we have got two-and-a-half-thousand
more, fewer police, after the election. So we're not misrepresenting the
Labour Party, we are simply telling straight-forward facts about what their
record has been and presenting straight-forward conclusions about where
they're going...
HUMPHRYS: You don't think people
might respect you a little more if you were a little more measured, a little
more statesmanlike?
LANSLEY: We are always measured
in what we say, about our own policies and about the Labour Party...
HUMPHRYS: ...and contempt is a
measured word...
LANSLEY: ...and indeed it is.
If the Labour Party, Mr Blair in particular, bring the public into contempt
by the way in which they treat the public, then I think it is right to
characterise him in that way. And those around him.
HUMPHRYS: Andrew Lansley, thank
you very much indeed.
LANSLEY: Thank you.
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